


Of Distant Dark Places

by thatworldinverted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:37:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatworldinverted/pseuds/thatworldinverted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the halls of his mind palace, hidden away in the center of the labyrinth, light glows underneath a solitary door. It might have been a library, once, or a treasure trove, but the shelves are empty and dust hangs in the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Distant Dark Places

The yearning whispers through him, sings temptation with a voice as sickly-sweet as a siren.  

  
It is nights like this one that wear at his resolve; nights when the voices around him break, indecipherable, regardless of what is spoken. When the spaces in his head are chilled, full of shadows and silence.

  
He marshals his thoughts. Focuses on the business in front of him. He needs the information this man is selling- knows that it shows. He reads the man’s face and finds greed, disdain, but also an unfortunate amount of awareness. The man may be little more than a rusty cog in the system, but they both know who has the upper hand, and exactly what any attempts to bargain will accomplish.

  
The exhaustion is bone-deep; Scylla to the Charybdis of his cravings. He wants little more than to stop this; to curl up and let oblivion take him, but he’s painfully aware of the necessity driving this transaction. With what he learns today, dozens of other such... arrangements... will be possible, a Jacob’s Ladder of secrets with no end in sight.

  
He pays the absurd asking price, gathers his prize, and walks away. Retreats to his dim hidey-hole of a room.

  
It’s such a little thing in the palm of his hand. It seems impossible that what it contains hasn’t given it more weight, something titanic, rather than a piece of metal and plastic he could crush beneath his heel. He’s very nearly distracted by the lure of new-found data. It hints at names and locations- weapons he needs in this ongoing battle- but its voice isn’t strong enough to overpower the one already looping through his brain.

  
He’s known that he would give in for hours. Is already relishing the inevitable sting and burn of it, the precious escape.

  
He takes his time; works through the well-established ritual, a testament to his weakness and just how often he’s succumbed. Shucks denim and flannel, layers of clothing that hem him in, then slips between his sheets. Does the same to the outer stratum of his mind. Pulls down carefully-built walls and demolishes boundaries until both flesh and thoughts are electric with awareness and exposure.

  
In the halls of his mind palace, hidden away in the center of the labyrinth, light glows underneath a solitary door. It might have been a library, once, or a treasure trove, but the shelves are empty and dust hangs in the air. There is one book, and one book only, lying on a table in the center of the room.

  
It is an atlas.

  
: : :

  
He forces himself to be patient. There have been times when he’s flipped directly to the last page, over-indulged and ended things too quickly. Those are the days that he’s called back, again and again, unsatiated. Better to draw it out. Turn each gilded page with the delicacy of a docent.

  
Europe.

  
England.

  
London.

  
Westminster.

  
Baker Street.

  
He traces over the tiny depiction of his flat. Runs a finger across the streets that lead, like veins, straight to the heart.

  
Gasps in a breath and turns another page.

  
For all the times he’s viewed it, the shock of it hits him with a brilliance that has yet to fade. It is the magnesium flash of a perfect hit of heroin.

  
_John_.

  
They are captured, with intricate detail, in a moment that has yet to happen. It isn’t what some would expect- not a clutch of bodies, limbs entangled. The phantom press of fingers on skin may wake him from fevered sleep occasionally, but it’s as nothing compared to this.

  
This is two men relaxed on the sofa, close and comfortable, but occupied with other things. To the casual observer, they would seem barely aware of each other’s presence.

  
As always, his eye captures everything the casual observer would have missed, and the hushed potential of this moment makes him ache.

  
It is the way that his hand rests easily in John’s hair.

  
The look on John’s face when contentment has smoothed away the creases.

  
There’s a sliver of belly between jumper and trousers, and John is plainly too comfortable to be bothered readjusting. It makes him tremble; makes him want to press his mouth just there, on that strip of skin. Nothing more, no further, but he longs to learn the taste of that vulnerable space.

  
Many people- John included- have accused him of a lack of self-awareness. He would argue that he can read his own expression as clear as day in this instant. His eyes, fixed not on the text in his hand but the top of John’s head; the slight, soft purse of his mouth; the flush just beginning to spread across his cheekbones.

  
This is the moment before he tells John he is in love with him. Not for the first time or even for the hundredth, but a time in which they’ve lost count. Have exchanged it, back and forth, like sharing the toothpaste in the morning. He imagines the pleased hum that will be John’s only response. It is a sound that says ‘yes’ and ‘I know’ and ‘I love you, too,’ but also a little bit ‘I’m busy reading, you know.’

  
It is this sound, more than anything, that sees him through this never-ending hunt. This sound that tells him that John will never leave, that John will be there when he returns; that he will not be alone. He wants to roll in it, wrap the warm, golden timbre of it around him. It is the sound of John’s unshakeable faith, and he needs it more than cigarettes, more than pricey strings of code, more than he needs a bullet with Sebastian Moran’s name on it.

  
He stands there, watching, for ages, but it doesn’t seem like long enough when the string at his wrist begins to tug. He sets the atlas to rights, moves backward through the pages.

  
Baker Street.

  
Westminster.

  
London.

  
England.

  
Europe.

  
Locks the library door and swallows the key, feels it plinking in his suddenly empty chest. His internal alarm pulls, and he follows, climbing out of the depths.   
  
  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the absolutely lovely "Set Fire to the Third Bar," by Snow Patrol.


End file.
